Why Australians aren't the richest in the world., page-41

Why not? Well i think theres a few strong reasons for our government not to do such a thing plus we already provide heaps of free services, medical, pensions, NDIS, safety nets and lots of other things.

I think the biggest reason for the Government to not to do such a thing is the massive financial risks and uncertainty of future revenues involved with mining and exploration, the Government shouldn't really be in the risk business as it can't afford to go bust, whereas mining companies and investors can afford to go bust and both understand the high risks in the mining sector when investing in them, Governments are far better off letting companies and investors take risks and just tax the ones that make money because then the government and the Australian people can't lose financially.

It was only a year or so ago that BHP was making money from Nickel mining, now it's not, IGO bought a mining company a year or so ago thinking it would produce revenues and profit and the other day it had to near writedown the whole value of it. Governments cannot afford to go around writing down it's assets when things go bad or bad decisions are made, they need to stay away from such concentrated risks and get revenues without such large risks by having a more diverse range of tax revenues so if one sector fails it can rely on other sectors.